Freedom as Antipower

Abstract

There is a strong and traditional association between being free and not being dominated or subjugated by anyone: not being under the yoke of another's power, not being defenselessly susceptible to interference by another. The contrary of the liber, or free, person in Roman, republican usage was the serves, or slave, and up to at least the beginning of the last century, the dominant connotation of freedom, emphasized in the long republican tradition, was not having to live in servitude to another: not being subject to the arbitrary power of another.' The author of the eighteenth-century tract Cato's Letters expressed the point succintly: Liberty is, to live upon one's own Terms; Slavery is, to live at the mere Mercy of another.2 The refrain was taken up with particular emphasis later in the eighteenth century, when it was echoed by the leaders and champions of the American Revolution.3 The antonym of liberty has ceased to be subjugation or domination-has ceased to be defenseless susceptibility to interference by another-and has come to be actual interference, instead. There is no loss of liberty without actual interference, according to most contemporary thought: no loss of liberty in just being susceptible to inter-